Freedom in the World 2001 - Peru

2001 Scores

Status: Partly Free
Freedom Rating: 3.0
Civil Liberties: 3
Political Rights: 3

Overview

In late November 2000, President Alberto Fujimori was removed from office; opposition forces assumed control of congress; and a highly respected opposition leader, Valentin Paniagua, was chosen as interim president of Peru. The beginning of the end for the autocratic Fujimori came during the May national elections; the major opposition candidate withdrew from competition rather than participate in a contest that international observers believed was neither free nor fair. Ironically, the final blow for a government that constantly wiretapped and videotaped its opponents came when a tape of Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's political fixer and drug mafia mouthpiece known as the "Rasputin of the Andes," bribing an opposition congressman was released to the press. New elections were called for April 8, 2001, and a number of high-ranking military officers known for their loyalty to Fujimori and Montesinos were purged; the remaining general staff pledged its loyalty to the constitution and the civilian government. In early December 2000, Fujimori claimed that Montesinos was still wielding power from behind the scenes by blackmailing congressmen to force them to do his bidding after having videotaped them taking bribes.

Since independence in 1821, Peru has seen alternating periods of civilian and military rule. Civilian rule was restored in 1980 after 12 years of dictatorship. That same year, the Maoist Shining Path terrorist group launched a guerrilla war that killed 30,000 people over the next 13 years.

Fujimori, a university rector and engineer, defeated the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 election. In 1992 Fujimori, backed by the military, suspended the constitution and dissolved congress. The move was popular because of people's disdain for Peru's corrupt, elitist political establishment and fear of the Shining Path.

Fujimori held a state-controlled election for an 80-member constituent assembly to replace the congress. The assembly drafted a constitution that established a unicameral congress more closely under presidential control. The constitution was approved in a state-controlled referendum following the capture of the Shining Path leader, Abimael Guzmán.

Fujimori's principal opponent in the 1995 election was former United Nations secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar, who vowed to end Fujimori's "dictatorship." Fujimori crushed his opponent with a massive public spending and propaganda campaign that utilized state resources. The National Intelligence Service, under de facto head Vladimiro Montesinos, a Fujimori ally and one-time legal counsel to drug kingpins, was employed to spy on and discredit Perez de Cuellar and other opposition candidates. On April 9, 1995, Fujimori won an easy victory, besting Perez de Cuellar by about three to one, while Fujimori's loose coalition of allies won a majority in the new 120-seat congress.

In August 1996 congress passed a law allowing Fujimori to run for a third term, despite a constitutional provision limiting the president to two terms. The law evaded this restriction by defining Fujimori's current term as his first under the 1993 constitution.

On April 22, 1997, the seizure of the Japanese ambassador's residence came to a violent end when a commando raid liberated all but one of the 72 hostages and killed all 14 of the insurgents. That May, the president of the seven-person Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees – the body that assesses the constitutional legality of national legislation – resigned with the words "the rule of law has broken down in Peru." His action came after congress dismissed three other tribunal members who had ruled, at the end of 1996, that legislation designed to enable Fujimori to stand for reelection in the year 2000 was not applicable. In March 1998 the National Magistrates Council resigned en masse four months after Fujimori's congress altered the National Elections Commission so as to give the president increased influence. In late 1999, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution criticizing Fujimori for interfering with the judiciary, harassing the press, and manipulating Peruvian institutions in order to stay in power.

In the April 9, 2000, presidential elections. Fujimori beat Alejandro Toledo, a U.S.-educated economist who grew up in an Indian shantytown, by 49.9 percent to 40.2 percent. Fujimori, however, came in 20,000 votes short of an outright win, and a runoff election was slated for May 28. Toledo refused to participate in the second round, pointing out that, in addition to election-day voting irregularities, he had been routinely assaulted by Fujimori supporters in the earlier campaign, had suffered constant death threats and phone taps, was virtually blacked out from media coverage, and was the target of smear attacks in the press.

In late July, Fujimori sought to refurbish his democratic credentials by naming a former opposition presidential candidate as prime minister. U.S. efforts to take a strong line with Fujimori in support of reforms, however, were sandbagged in the Organization of American States (OAS), which had earlier refused to certify the elections as free and fair. However, U.S. pressure also flagged when the Clinton administration decided isolating Fujimori internationally could cripple the regional war on drugs. In early September a videotape was released that showed Montesinos bribing an opposition congressman, at the same time that the spy chief was also being linked to the illegal shipment of arms to Colombian guerrillas. Coming after one of the most widely questioned elections the region had seen in decades, the ensuing scandal raised suspicions that Fujimori had secured a parliamentary majority – after having failed to win one outright in the April 9 general elections – by bribing opposition congressmen to change sides. On September 16th a weakened Fujimori agreed to call new elections for 2001 in which he would not run. During October, Montesinos and Fujimori engaged in a running battle to see who would control the military; when Montesinos lost, he hurriedly went into exile, only to return several weeks later and go into hiding, pursued unsuccessfully by a military manhunt led personally by his former boss.

Following Fujimori's overthrow, the new opposition-controlled congress began a process of renewal of the constitutional tribunal and reform of the constitution, so as to eliminate consecutive reelection and to forestall the rise of another Fujimori. The notorious National Intelligence Service, the key to Montesinos's sinister reach, was abolished. The attorney general, a Fujimori loyalist who had blocked investigations into corruption and abuses of power by high government officials, was fired and replaced by a respected independent. An agreement was also reached to restart a judicial reform program aborted by Fujimori in 1999. At the end of 2000, Fujimori announced he was availing himself of his dual citizenship to remain in Japan. The government said it was opening a probe into allegations that Montesinos – a one-time Central Intelligence Agency asset who went into hiding after Fujimori was overthrown – had laundered more than $50 million through Swiss banks. In addition, the official in charge of organizing the 2001 general election raised the possibility that April 8 might be too soon to organize the voting.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Following Fujimori's overthrow, the new authorities began to prepare the conditions under which there would be sufficient time for opposition forces to organize themselves and for candidates to declare themselves. At the end of 2000, congress was reforming the constitution, replacing a single nationwide district for congressional elections with a system of multiple districts based on the departments (provinces) into which the country is divided for administrative purposes. The move is designed to provide fair representation for the almost 50 percent of the people who live outside of the four largest cities, and to guarantee them some attention from the state and from political parties, which traditionally have ignored them.

Under the December 1993 constitution, the president could rule virtually by decree; Fujimori was given the power to dissolve congress in the event of a "grave conflict" between the executive and legislature, as he did in 1992. The 1993 constitution also overturned Peru's tradition of no reelection.

On the eve of Fujimori's removal from office, reforms designed to guarantee judicial independence were re-initiated by the former opposition. These include abolishing executive personnel commissions, relocating the Council of the Magistracy as a politically autonomous entity, and regularizing the job tenure of the 70-odd percent of the judiciary with "provisional" status, a condition that allows them to be removed by executive fiat.

Public safety, particularly in Lima, is threatened by vicious warfare by opposing gangs – some of which use body armor and high-powered weapons – and violent crime. Police estimate that there are more than 1,000 criminal gangs in the capital alone. Torture was routine in police detention centers through most of 2000, and conditions remain deplorable in prisons for common criminals. On a positive note, in 2000 the national ombudsman released a report documenting the "disappearances" of more than 4,000 peasants during the 1980-1995 period of internal war against Shining Path terrorism. In addition to being the first official admission of such abuses, the report called for repeal of a blanket amnesty granted in 1995 for rights abuses committed by the security forces. Also, a number of defendants convicted of associations with terrorist movements by secret military courts were granted new trials in civilian courts, and their cases are being reinvestigated.

The press is largely privately owned. Radio and television are both privately and publicly owned. Since 1992, Peru has had one of the worst records on press freedom in the world. Many in the media, especially television and print journalists, were pressured into self-censorship or exile by a broad Fujimori government campaign of intimidation – abductions, death threats, libel suits, withholding of advertising, police harassment, arbitrary detention, physical mistreatment, and imprisonment on charges of "apology for terrorism." In September 1997, a government-controlled court stripped Baruch Ivcher, an Israeli émigré and the owner of the Channel 2 television station, of control of his media business and his Peruvian citizenship after the station aired reports linking the military to torture and corruption, as well as an exposé of a telephone espionage ring run by intelligence agents to spy on opposition politicians and journalists. By 2000, most newspapers and radio and television channels were controlled directly or indirectly by Montesinos. In August 2000 Ivcher had his citizenship restored, a move that allowed him to win the court battle over ownership of the station.

Racism against Peru's large Indian population is prevalent among the middle and upper classes, although the Fujimori government made some effort to combat it. On a positive note, Toledo, a peasant's son turned World Bank economist, embraced his indigenous heritage on the campaign trail, calling himself the "Rebel Indian." The provisions of the 1993 constitution and subsequent implementing legislation regarding the treatment of native lands are less explicit about the inalienability and unmarketability of these lands than were earlier constitutional and statutory protections.

In 1996 the International Labor Organization criticized the labor code for failing to protect workers from anti-union discrimination and for restricting collective bargaining rights. Forced labor, including child labor, is prevalent in the gold-mining region of the Amazon.

Status Change Explanation

Peru's political rights rating changed from 5 to 3 and its civil liberties rating changed from 4 to 3 due to the largely peaceful overthrow of autocratic president Alberto Fujimori and the installation of an opposition government committed to free and fair elections in 2001, as well as improvements in human rights and press freedom.